1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a device for subdividing a light beam, preferably a laser beam into a plurality of preferably parallel and equidistant beams, or for combining a plurality of beams into one beam.
2. Description of Prior Art
Translucent mirrors can conceivably be utilized to subdivide a laser beam into parallel beams, these mirrors being arranged at predetermined mutual spacing after each other in the path of the beam which is to be divided. These mirrors are then arranged mutually parallel and at an oblique angle to the path of the beam. At each such mirror, a part of the beam will be deflected and another part of it will be transmitted through the respective mirror. The reflected beams will be parallel if the mirrors can be adjusted to mutual parallelism, and the distance between the reflected beams can be made equidistant by making the mutual spacing between the parallel mirrors constant. Such an apparatus is, however, extremely difficult to adjust for providing a division of the laser beam into parallel equidistant beams, and it is hard to conceive that it could be practically usable.
It is previously known, for the object of giving a laser pulse a desired pulse shape, to divide a laser beam into parallel beams with the aid of a so-called beam divider and a mirror, which are arranged parallel and at given mutual spacing. In such apparatus, as will be seen from the British Patent Specification No. 1 440 538, parallelism is however dependent on how accurate the parallelism between mirror and divider can be set, and furthermore, the intensity of the divided beams is dependent on how exactly the dividing ability of the beam divider is managed. Apparatus of the type covered by the patent specification mentioned cannot conceivably be usable in applications wherein the apparatus is subjected to different forms of stress, nor can the apparatus be conceived as capable of being produced to a low cost.
There is also a need of apparatus by which a plurality of light beams can be combined into a single light beam; and the construction of such apparatus could correspond completely to the beam dividing apparatus discussed above.
One object of the invention is therefore to provide a device of the type mentioned in the introduction, which has a durable construction and can afford a high degree of parallellism and equidistance between divided beams or the reverse, can be produced at low cost, can afford an ease of adjustment in varying the distance between the divided beams, or beams which are to be put together, and can afford the possibility of generating an array or a matrix of beams, which can thereby advantageously be parallel and equidistant in rows, or can afford the possibility of combining a matrix of such beams into a single beam.